


Forget the bull in the china shop; there’s a china doll in the bullpen

by taylor_tut



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Exhaustion, Fever, Gen, Headaches & Migraines, Sick Character, Sick Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Sickfic, Withdrawal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:40:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28280292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/pseuds/taylor_tut
Summary: Title from Bullpen by Dessa :) Basically just a request from my tumblr for Jon going through statement withdrawal. The others try to help him quit the statements and it doesn't quite go as planned.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 173





	Forget the bull in the china shop; there’s a china doll in the bullpen

Friday 8:06 a.m.: 

“Statement begins—” 

“Not so fast,” Basira’s voice interrupts, jarring Jon from his trance-like fixation. 

“B-Basira? I’m sorry, what are you—” 

“I thought we agreed no more statements.” 

Jon fumbles. “I--thought you meant the live ones. The HUNTING.”

“All of it,” she replies. “Best way to break an addiction is cold-turkey.” 

“Is… is that true?”

“True or not, it’s not like it’ll kill you,” she says, as if that’s an answer. She doesn’t wait for a reply before she jerks the file folder out of Jon’s hands and leaves the room. 

The tape recorder is not satisfied and does not switch off. Jon leaves it running as he gets up from the table and pours himself into other duties. 

It’s taken the better part of the week for the statement withdrawal to get bad enough that Jon is struggling to cope. Monday, it wasn’t even noticeable. Perhaps, if he slept more regularly and his coworkers weren’t used to his face looking drawn and exhausted, they might have noticed the pallor and shakiness beginning to set in, but as it stood, no one said a word. 

Tuesday had been a bit rough. Even Tim had asked if he was feeling alright, but he’d quickly qualified it with the fact that he only cared whether he had some sort of transmittable plague to spread round the office, and when Jon swore it wasn’t like that, he’d marched off, not needing to know more. 

By Wednesday, he’d claimed a migraine, which wasn’t a lie by any stretch of the word. Basira had handed him a hair tie after he’d rushed into the restroom to be sick, and he’d taken it, attempted to pull his hair back despite the sensitivity of his scalp, feeling like even his hair hurt. He’d spent the remainder of the day in his office with the lights out, swearing to himself every half hour that he’d get up in another half an hour until he eventually fell asleep on the floor leaning up against his desk. 

Thursday, 2:21 p.m.

“I just need—”

“No statements.”

“--help,” he finishes, feeling his body shake with another aggressive shiver. “I don’t want to take the statements, either. But I don’t think I can do this.” 

Basira frowns. “Daisy said the same thing, Jon,” she says in a tone lingering somewhere between comforting and condescending. “Addicts never think they can quit. You’re in the worst of it, now. I promise.”

Jon huffs a laugh through his nose. “How could you possibly know that?” he demands. “Even I don’t know that. The Eye stopped telling me things five hours ago.” 

“See? Less monster-y already.” 

Jon doesn’t have the energy to argue that it feels more like things are beginning to shut down than it does that he’s breaking free. 

“I’m afraid that if I get too… hungry, I’ll lose control.” 

Basira’s eyes now flash with compassion, a rare softness to them that Jon wishes he had the strength to keep looking at, because they’re quite enchanting, really. “We won’t let that happen,” she reassures. “Me, Martin, Daisy, even Tim--we’ll take turns staying outside the spare room, two at a time; make sure you don’t leave.” 

Jon shakes his head. “I can’t ask—”

“You didn’t,” she points out. “I’m insisting. It was my idea.” 

“The others would never agree to it.” 

“They already have. Jon, you’re the only person here who doesn’t want you to get better, so you might as well stop making excuses. If you want to go full-speed ahead monster, that’s your prerogative, but if you don’t take advantage of a way out, you should know we’re prepared to treat you like one.” 

This time, the shiver isn’t related to the withdrawal. 

“Right,” Jon concedes. “Okay. May I grab a few things, at least?” 

Humiliating, he thinks, is the way it feels to have Basira follow him around, gun ever-present but at least in its holster, while he gathers what he’ll need to ride this out. He uses the blanket from his office chair as a basket to carry a water bottle, some peppermint oil that Tim had given him for migraines a very long time ago, his phone charger, a few books. How does someone pack a bag to go dry out alone? Jon assumes he should just pack everything he’s ever wished he’d brought to the airport when a flight was laid over, even though there’s no comparing the two. 

Monday, 9:14 a.m.

Basira beats on the door with her fist rather than her knuckles, a dull but loud thump. 

“Jon,” she shouts. “Brought you lunch.” 

His mouth fills with copper. 

“Don’t want it.” 

He can tell she’s rolling her eyes. “Don’t be petulant,” she commands. “I’m coming in.” 

Her gun is drawn, a fact which would sting if the smell of food weren’t so overpoweringly more unpleasant. It’s just soup, something canned and hot and probably very salty and otherwise bland, but it’s enough to make his stomach churn, and before he can even berate her for disrespecting his wishes, he’s bent over the small trash can and dry heaving. There’s nothing much in his stomach to bring up, which is painful. 

She waits until he’s done, at least for the moment. 

“Right,” she says in lieu of an apology. “Ice chips for lunch again, then?” 

Jon nods, grateful for not having to verbally make the request. When she shuts the door behind her, the slight smell of soup from the small amount of steam enclosed in here with him turns his stomach again, and he’s only barely managing to put himself back together when Basira returns with a bowl of crushed ice. 

“This is the third meal in a row you’ve not been able to keep down.” It’s a statement, not one of worry but not particularly mocking, either. Just a fact, detached and obvious. So he nods. “It’ll be a good thing in the end, Jon. Try to keep that in mind.” 

He’s not sure, anymore, if she cares whether this breaks the tie between Jon and Beholding or if it just kills him. Basira cares fiercely about people, human people, and in a lot of ways that have been incredibly unfair to her, that’s been all she can prioritize. 

And he’s trying, above all, to tread lightly, to make his existence and, quite possibly, his exit, as easy as it can be on the others he affects. He remembers a time when he might have wanted to change the world, and now it’s his worst fear. 

“Is there anything you think you could stomach for supper?” Quickly, Jon shakes his head, but apparently, the question was not intended to have, as it had been phrased, a yes or no answer. She frowns. “You can’t keep not eating. You’re practically translucent already.” 

Make it easier on her, he reminds himself, even if it’s harder on him. “A piece of dry toast?” he guesses, his tone so flat with exhaustion that the trepidation in it is almost lost. “Maybe. I could try.” 

“Done.” 

He does try. He manages about half of it before he has to push it away, and it only stays down for half an hour, but that’s enough time for Basira to praise him for doing better and to remind him Daisy will be by in the morning to check on him. 

Tuesday, 10:32 a.m.

Jon wakes feeling both like he’s slept for a week straight and like he hasn’t gotten any rest at all. The somnolence of waking in the middle of a sleep cycle combined with the feeling of his internal fuel tank being on E combine, leaving him a confused, groggy mess when Daisy opens the door with a loud crash, then a curse.

“Sorry,” she whispers, as if being quiet will do any good now that the sound has already taken a hammer to his skull that will reverberate for hours. “I’ve things in my hands; couldn’t control the door.” 

“S’fine,” he replies without opening his eyes or sitting up. 

“No better, I take it?” Ha. Jon doesn't bother responding. “Brought you toast. Basira told me you managed some yesterday.” 

Jon doesn't want to try again. He's not hungry, plus, it makes his heart race worse than it already is, and the idea of eating just to feel sick afterward is not tempting. 

The thought of Daisy leaving is tempting, though, and there's only one way to get her to do that. 

He sits up and immediately his eyes flutter shut. Daisy is paying just enough attention to curse and catch his head before it hits the floor beneath him, and she wrestles him into a seated position propped up against her side. 

“Wow, you really are having a rough go. I thought Basira was exaggerating.” 

He shrugs, because what can he say to that? His eyes are more comfortable closed, both from exhaustion and blocking out the low light of the room, so he just lets himself have a moment of quiet resting against her. Daisy’s hand finds its way to his forehead. 

“I think you're starting to run a bit of a fever,” she murmurs. “You must be miserable, alone in here like this.” 

Jon sighs. “You went through it too,” he finds the energy to say. 

“Not quite as bad as all this. The Eye really has its teeth in you. So to speak.” 

He huffs a laugh. “That's the whole point of this, I guess.”

“Hm.” Daisy does not leave, but he finds that he doesn't mind so much, once she makes it clear she's not going to force the toast on him and allows him to lie back and sleep again. He wakes up several times to her still touching him ever so slightly, and when he finally opens his eyes to find her gone, the toast is still on the table with a piece of paper that the Eye tells him is a threat to eat it or else.

Wednesday, 8:01 a.m.

The toast is still untouched when Martin comes in the next morning more quietly than Jon thinks Martin has entered a room in his entire life. Probably chalk that one up to knowing how to deal with an ill person. Whatever the reason, Jon is glad for it. 

Martin doesn't greet him because Jon doesn't indicate that he's awake. Instead, he starts to care for him so tenderly that Jon cannot bring himself to let Martin know he’s conscious, because while it's a relief to have his hair washed with a neutral-smelling soap in a warm basin of water and his skin wiped down with a cool washcloth, it's also intensely intimate, which would be uncomfortable for both of them and humiliating for Jon. 

After the bathing, Martin sticks around. He takes out a book and begins to read, sometimes softly aloud but mostly to himself. Jon intends to open his eyes after a few minutes and act like he’s just woken, but when he finally gets up the courage to stir, he finds that he’s actually fallen asleep again. 

“Jon?” Martin calls when he hears the sharp intake of breath that now accompanies the discomfort of consciousness. 

“W’time’s it?” 

Martin smiles slightly, glances at his phone. “Half noon.” 

Christ. He was really out. Jon groans, half for the feeling of having wasted another day and half just because. God, he hurts.

“Think you could try some white rice?” 

Jon shakes his head sharply. “Could I have some water?” He hesitates. “Please.” 

“Of course, Jon.” Martin came prepared and unscrews the top from a water bottle, room temperature, helps him hold it with shaping hands. “Good. Small sips.” Before Jon feels like he’s had enough, Martin tugs the bottle lightly away. “Go slow. Let’s see how that sits, then we’ll try for more.” 

Jon could cry--even in these small ways, when it feels like the world is demanding so much from him, Martin is the only person whose goal is to ensure Jon doesn’t break trying to please everyone. 

“Thank you.” Martin frowns nervously, frets a little at his meekness, the polite acceptance of help. It’s just been a long time since anyone has been in here that’s made him feel safe, and he knows it’s only getting worse. When his eyes slip closed against his will again, he feels the back of Martin’s hand against his forehead, hears him sigh. 

“You’re warm,” he murmurs. 

“Hm. Been so.” 

“Do you think you could tolerate some sports drink? Electrolytes and whatnot. Might help you feel a little better to gain back some salts.” 

Well. He’d try anything for Martin. He shrugs and takes a few sips of the lightly flavored vitamin water. Martin praises him and promises that the sugars and the liquids will help ease the headache, allows him to take a few more paracetamol even though they haven’t been helping and he hasn’t been keeping them down very often. 

“I’ll be by with dinner, later,” he says before he leaves. “If you need anything—” he cuts himself off. They’ve given Jon no real way to communicate with them, after all. Locked into the spare room, in too much pain to look at his cell phone and make a call or text; hadn’t even given him a radio for the fear that the Eye would be able to sift through the channels for some kind of shitty talk show and feed off interviews. “Well. I’ll be by with dinner later.” 

Jon lets himself drift to sleep once more. 

Thursday, 11:55 a.m.

He’d dragged his feet for as long as he could, pretending to have important work to do when in reality he’d sworn off doing any at all, but Tim can’t put off the inevitability of facing Jon forever.

Really, he’s not sure what he’s so nervous about. If Martin’s report is anything to go by, Jon isn’t really going to be in the mood for talking. Jon’s been… trying, he supposes, since they found out about Sasha, but the explanations have all sounded, to Tim, like excuses, and he’s not ready to hear either yet. He only managed to get roped into this because he thought he’d be calling Jon’s bluff: that if given the choice of surrendering to being a monster and giving it up, that Jon would choose the Eye. 

Tim was wrong. Jon had proved him wrong. Perhaps that’s why he doesn’t want to go into the room. He’s not ready to face the person Jon is after so many months spent avoiding and hating the person he was. 

But. Martin will know if he skips his turn, and Jon needs food and water. 

He’s never been good at entering a room quietly, but even so, Jon doesn’t stir when he opens the door. 

“Jon, it’s nearly noon,” he announces as he sets the bowl of leftover rice Martin had made yesterday (Jon had apparently denied it pretty adamantly). “Time to have lunch.” 

Jon, once more, doesn’t move. Tim frowns. 

“Jonathan Sims,” he calls in his best impression of the voice his mother would use when he and Danny had ignored their alarm clocks in favor of sleeping in on a school day. “Rise and shine. I’ve brought you lunch and I don’t want to spend all day in here.” 

Honestly, he’s surprised Jon hasn’t lost his mind in here already. It’s dark and small and unbearably stuffy and quiet. This time, Jon moves a little, but if Tim hadn’t been staring directly at him, he’d have missed it. The movement is barely there, a little twitch and the smallest groan. His eyelids flutter but do not open. 

Tim takes a few steps closer, curious, and crouches down. Jon is pale and frighteningly thin. He’s wearing joggers and a jumper, both of which hang comically large over his frame. Tim would assume they were his own, just given the size discrepancy, if the jumper weren’t embroidered with the logo of the university Jon attended. This fit him, at one point. Also alarming is the flush in Jon’s face, hair dry but matted down like he’d been sweating, and the rapid, shallow breaths he’s taking. 

“Christ,” Tim can’t help but mutter. He looks pitiful and uncomfortable. “Jon. You need some fluids. Come on.” 

When Tim shakes his bony shoulder lightly, he’s amazed and alarmed at the heat pouring off, trapped swirling between the jumper and his skin. “Jesus; Martin calls this a low-grade fever?” 

He’s mostly speaking to himself, but at the mention of Martin’s name, Jon once again tries to open his eyes, struggling with the weight of his own eyelashes as if they were taped down. 

This isn’t getting better. When is it supposed to start getting better? Basira keeps saying he’ll turn a corner, but what if she’s wrong?

“Boss,” he demands, the nickname slipping in because he’s not actively thinking about it and because it takes a lot longer to break a habit formed in love and familiarity than one from hatred. “Wake up. You’ve got to wake up, now.” 

Once more, Jon just huffs a small, wheezing groan and struggles against his own lax body. 

This isn’t working. This isn’t GOING to work. They’d made up the Secondhand Trauma Detox Diet protocol from wishful thinking and vague, television-imagined understandings of drug withdrawal, but this is like taking out Jon’s liver and acting like he’s weak for missing it. 

They’re not drying him out; they’re starving him. 

So, he makes a choice. Basira will be furious, Daisy and Martin will be annoyed that he’s undoing all their hard work: even Jon might be upset about the choice being made for him; but he can’t let him just die like this. 

“Don’t move,” he warns, as if he believes Jon could if he wanted to. “I’ll be right back.” 

Tim leaves the room unlocked and finds the thinnest statement folder he can from the stacks. If it takes more than this one to get Jon back on his feet, Jon can read the rest alone, but this is as far as he’s willing to go for him, he tells himself. 

When he gets back to the room, Jon, predictably, hasn’t moved. Tim sits on the floor beside his cot and reads until Jon begins to squirm, then shoves the unfinished statement into Jon’s hands as soon as his eyes are open and blinking, owlish and confused, at Tim. 

Tim doesn’t immediately leave and Jon doesn’t break the stare. 

“Did it… work?” Jon asks stupidly, and Tim gestures to the folder. 

“What do you think?” Jon tries to do just that, but it looks difficult and painful, so much so that he can’t even pull the “no” from the heavy context clues. “It didn’t.” 

Jon looks gutted. “Oh.” 

“Yeah.” 

Another long, awkward moment that Tim could leave but doesn’t. “What now?” 

“Now,” Tim supplies, “you finish that statement. Then probably another. Until that fever isn’t cooking your brain anymore.” 

Visibly torn, Jon tries to shove the folder away from himself while also gripping it impossibly and probably involuntarily tighter. “I don’t want—”

“Yeah, join the club,” Tim curtails. “None of us want any of this. But. It’s what’s happening. What has to happen.” 

A long, long silence. “I’m not… Not human, anymore, am I.” 

It’s not a question, and it’s said so weakly that Tim almost doesn’t hear it. “Don’t think so.” 

Jon shudders, or maybe it’s just a shiver. 

“Read,” Tim demands. “I’ll be back with lunch.” 

When he comes back from microwaving the rice in the break room, Jon is sitting up and able to finish the whole bowl. 

And they both hate what that means.


End file.
